Sequenza21

John Schneider and his group “Partch” gave their annual REDCAT concert of Partch’s music last night.  The program included Partch’s film of U.S. Highball:  A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip (1958, film completed in 1968).  The program began with the eight hitchhiker inscriptions of Barstow (1941/1943/1968); this interesting site provide clips of different performances of the first inscription.  The second half of the program included rousing performances of Ring Around the Moon (1950) and Castor & Pollux (1952), both involving the seven instrumentalists in the group.  The audience jumped up and called their approval at the end.

There were ten Partch instruments (in addition to the voice):  the Adapted Viola (1930), the two Adapted Guitars (1935 and 1945), the Kithara (1938), the Chromelodeon (1941), Harmonic Canon (1945), Diamond Marimba (1946), HypoBass (1950), Cloud Chamber Bowls (1950) and Bass Marimba (1950).

Two of the instrumentalists, Vicki Ray and David Johnson, were key in Tuesday night’s concert by Xtet at the County Museum.  For me a high point was The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine for orator, piano, violin and cello by Aaron Jay Kernis.  (Amazon’s sound clip doesn’t include the oration, so it lacks the flavor of the piece.)  The program began with three songs to Shakespeare by Stravinsky, and included three songs by John Cage and Morton Feldman’s lovely The Viola in My Life 2.  Phil O’Connor, Xtet’s frequent clarinetist/saxophone, presented the premiere of his new work War Again(st) ? (T)error!, a work of several episodes which didn’t seem linked to the title but which kept active.

“But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong? Whose life would he share? Whose language would he speak?” These words of Hermann Hesse depict Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) at a pivotal point in his quest to find purpose in the world. He will soon find it, seeing one where he once saw many, finding that the seemingly unrelated are related.

Later in the same book, Siddhartha, is a chapter called “By the River,” which inspired the title of Indian-American composer Asha Srinivasan’s newest work, By the River of Savathi, that will be premiered on June 2nd and 3rd, in New York City, as part of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Notable Women Festival: A Celebration of Women Composers”—result of winning first prize, among seventy-four applicants between the ages of twenty and thirty, in the BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) Foundation’s Women’s Music Commission. (more…)

With news that Apple is suing the manufacturers of the iGasm it occurred to me last night that this perhaps was a possible new venue for contemporary music. I brought up the subject with a few friends over beers and the debate began, ‘What piece of avant garde music would be the ideal iGasm driver?’

Steve Reich? Philip Glass? Xenakis? Ferneyhough? The winner at the table seemed to be the genre of noize punk. Driving 200 BMP noise. But who knows? Maybe your music could be a hit at this latest of new music venues extended! What piece of music would drive the adventurous iGasm user into sensory overload?

According to the American Symphony Orchestra League, which has been coordinating an advocacy campaign on the subject, the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee in the House of Representatives  passed yesterday a $35 Million increase in the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts.  According to ASOL, “This increase is significantly higher than the modest $4 million increase proposed by the President and represents a much more substantial restoration of NEA funds than has been proposed by the House committee since the NEA sustained a 40% budget cut more than a decade ago.”  I don’t see any confirmation of this on the committe’s website or on the news wires yet, but ASOL presumably has a reliable source.

The proposed increase is still a long way from becoming law.  If my understanding of the process is correct, the Appropriations Committe has to approve the recommendations of the Interior Committe, and then the budget has to be debated on the House floor and voted on, then debated and voted on in the Senate.  Chances are that different versions will be passed in the House and Senate, so it will then have to go to Conference, where the differences will be ironed out.  Then it goes back to both chambers and gets voted on again.  Then it goes to the President.  And at any point in here, the NEA funding increase could be used as a bargaining chip and get traded away for something else.

ASOL has a brief with background and talking points which you can read here.

UPDATE: The Chronicle of Higher Education has the story too.  The proposed budget seems to be $160 Million for the NEA and $160 Million for the NEH.  The $35 Million increase for the NEA would apparently be the largest increase ever.  The Chronicle also confirms that this proposal hasn’t been approved by the full Appropriations Committe, so it could easily go up in smoke.

Jacob ter Veldhuis might be the best composer you’ve never heard of. Let me explain.

Start with his 1999 piece “Heartbreakers,” which takes recordings of American daytime television talk shows like Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, and Oprah, and sets them within the context of a Jazz ensemble. Ter Veldhuis uses the technique, pioneered by Steve Reich in pieces like “Different Trains,” of playing fragments of speech and doubling the melodic patterns with the instruments. Musically, the result is a sort of post-minimalist jazz jam-fest, complete with improvised solos and speech clips sliced and diced and repeated until the meanings of the words are subsumed by the musical content. The bulk of the source material for the piece is crack addicted prostitutes being confronted by their mothers on Jerry Springer, and ter Veldhuis treats their plight with a fascinating combination of humor and sympathy, and that’s where the comparison with Steve Reich becomes moot. (more…)